


Talk of the Town

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [18]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coping, Gen, Gossip, Gossip Spreading, Kanan's delicate nose, Rumors, Space family, Visually Impaired Ezra Bridger, stinky Zeb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-29 21:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10144931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: On his way to talk to Ezra about the possibility of his condition becoming the subject of base gossip, Kanan discovers a rumor about himself currently is circulating.





	1. Chapter 1

Kanan didn’t actually feel unsteady on his feet as he made his careful way back to the Ghost, but he was aware that it probably looked that way. He walked more slowly than usual, taking the time to make sure that he was absolutely certain of where he was and what might be nearby. He was being overly cautious; he hadn’t had much to drink at all, but it had been more than he had expected, and he had learned the hard way the effect that alcohol could have on his ability to sense his surroundings. That had been an embarrassing mistake that he was in no hurry to repeat. He was just glad that Chopper hadn’t been around to witness it.

The drink had been surprisingly okay. It wasn’t something he would order in a bar, or anywhere with any kind of an alternative option, but it would do in a pinch, and unlike the last batch, it hadn’t felt as though it was stripping tastebuds from his tongue as it went down. Not only that, but the alcohol had taken the edge off what could have been a very difficult conversation.

Well, it had still been difficult, but the drink certainly hadn’t made it any worse.

Kanan tripped over something that wasn’t there. He stopped, hand on the wall, and took a deep breath. He wasn’t drunk, but he _was_ over-thinking, trying too hard to compensate for the what had to be negligible effect of a couple of shots, and it was having the opposite effect to what he had intended. It was leaving him more likely to make a mistake, not less. He made himself relax, reached out through the Force and located Hera. He needed to speak to Ezra, warn him about potential base gossip, but first he had better tell Hera that Rex had been informed.

He located her in her quarters and went directly there, trailing his hand again the wall as he did, just in case.

He pressed the door chime, but didn’t wait for an invitation before letting himself inside. He stepped through the door, and as it closed behind him, leaned against the wall. “One down,” he said.

Hera didn’t respond right away. He heard the sound of fingertips tapping at a datapad before the device was placed on the desk before her. “What?” she asked. She sounded distracted. 

Kanan moved away from the wall, took a few steps in her direction, and reached for the chair that she kept at the opposite side of the desk. He located it with a sweep of his hand, pulled it out and sat down heavily.

“You’ve been drinking,” Hera said accusingly.

Kanan frowned. “Well, yeah. I went to meet up with Rex, he happened to have a sample of the new batch from the still, so…” He covered his mouth. “It was only a little bit, you can’t smell it, can you?”

Hera sighed, and took a deep breath in through her nose. “No,” she assured him. “But I can always tell. You move differently, like you’re... uncertain again. I don’t like it, especially now.”

“I’m fine,” Kanan assured her. “It was two drinks.” He paused, considering. Unless Rex had topped him up without him noticing, which was entirely possible. He had been a little distracted at the time. “Rex knows now, anyway. I just thought I should tell you.”

Somewhere, on the very periphery of his awareness, Kanan noticed that Zeb had entered the ship. Judging by the time, he was probably heading to get something to eat, but there was a distinct possibility he intended to go to his quarters; the quarters that he shared with Ezra. Kanan frowned. If he did that, the chances were good that Ezra would leave, leading to a frustrating search before Kanan was able to speak to him.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, and directed all of his attention on Hera, refining his awareness to take in as many details as he could. She nodded. “Sato knows too, and…” she stopped. He felt a frustration from her, communicated through the Force.

“What is it?”

She sighed. “Sato’s removed Ezra from active duty,” she raised a hand as if to still his objections before he could voice them. “Don’t.”

“What?” he asked. He had heard her just fine, but the question gave him a moment to gather his thoughts. Unfortunately, they refused to be gathered. “What?” he said again.

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it. Let me explain,” Hera said, misunderstanding. “Sato spoke to Ezra after I was done telling him, I didn’t know anything about it until Ezra told me.”

Kanan shook his head, torn between the urge to stay and grill her for more information, and the equally strong urge to get to Ezra as soon as possible, talk to him about _this_ as well as the other thing. Before the other thing, because this was a more immediate concern, this was something that was affecting Ezra right now. He wouldn’t actually be able to _do_ anything about it, but he had to make sure the kid was alright. The two opposing urges left him trapped in the middle, unable to make himself do either. “Is Ezra okay?” he asked. “How did he take it?”

“How do you think?” Hera snapped, then sighed. “Sorry. No, not… not well.” She stumbled over the words, and Kanan could hear the stress and the exhaustion in her voice. “I told him I’d speak to Sato, but he’s tied up in meetings all day, then he’s leaving this evening, he won’t be back for a few days, so…” she buried her face in her hands. “The worst part is, I think he might be right. Sato, I mean. I wish he’d gone about it differently, but…” she tailed off again, sounding helpless as the words failed her.

Kanan reached across the desk and touched her lightly on the arm, trying to comfort her without implying that he was going to take her side in that. Sato wasn’t right. The whole thing made no sense. Ezra was… okay not _fine_ , but close enough to it that this was unnecessary at this stage.

He leaned in a little closer and dropped his voice to almost a whisper; a pointless gesture as they were the only ones present, but it felt right. “Listen to me,” he said. “You can’t imagine what this is like for Ezra.” He heard, or felt, he wasn’t sure, Hera open her mouth to reply. “No,” he said, cutting her off before she could protest his point. “You can’t imagine it, I know that because _I_ can’t imagine it.”

He let that statement hang in the air for a moment. If anyone could know what Ezra was going through, it should be Kanan, and maybe he did have a certain similar perspective, but it wasn’t the same thing, not really. It wasn’t even close.

“But what I do know is that he’s having a tough enough time as it is, without something else being taken from him,” he continued. “Especially this. You take this away, what does he have left?”

Hera sighed deeply. “He has us,” she said finally.

And that was true, but it had always been true, and it wasn’t enough.

“But I am going to speak to Sato,” she continued, “see if I can at least put some kind of condition, or review date on the suspension. He’s not _wrong_ though, Kanan. I wish he was. But if something happened because Ezra couldn't see, I’d never forgive myself, and I know _he_ wouldn’t either.”

Kanan shook his head. “I don’t think anything’s going…”

“Nor do I,” Hera interrupted. “But that’s the point, we just can’t _know_ that. Today, when I spoke to him, I was standing to his side and he couldn’t see me. He _should_ have been able to, but he couldn’t. If I’d been an enemy...”

“Okay. I need to speak to Ezra,” Kanan said as she tailed off. As he got to his feet, the door to Hera’s quarters opened for a second time.

Zeb. In his shock at the direction that the conversation had taken, Kanan had forgotten about the Lasat’s arrival, but the last thing he had been expecting was for him to burst unannounced through the door to Hera’s quarters. A foul odor followed him into the room.

Kanan could sense Hera’s horror at the sight of Zeb. Whatever was going on, he looked every bit as bad as he smelled.

“For the record,” Zeb said. “Spiders? Not good to eat.”

Hera was on her feet and at the other side of the desk in seconds. Kanan raised a hand to his nose to ward off the stench. It didn’t help.

“Well,” Zeb corrected, “I’m assuming. Having caught the damn thing, I actually couldn’t bring myself to try it on account of the smell.”

There was a sound too. A soft, wet, plop of something dripping onto the hard floor. Another spike of horror from Hera. “Is that _blood_?”

“Ah,” said Zeb, embarrassed. “Yeah, but it’s not mine. Anyway, I just thought I’d tell you I was back, in case you needed me for anything.”

“The only thing I need,” Hera told him, “is you in the shower _right now!_ And clean up any of the blood you’ve dripped on the floor before somebody slips.” She raised a hand to her head as though she had a headache coming. “And when you’re done, go and see Kanan before you go anywhere else, he can tell you if that smell’s gone.”

Kanan spun around to face Hera. “Wait, what?”

“Heh, yeah okay,” Zeb said, and disappeared. The door closed behind him.

Hera slumped as he did. She leaned back against her desk, half-sitting on the edge and cradled her head in her hands. “What is going on?” she asked. “Everything’s going wrong and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

The room still stank of spider, a fetid, rotten odor that brought to mind unpleasant memories. He reached for her, and pulled her into a loose embrace. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “Everyone’s a little on edge. Yourself included, probably. It’ll take a while for things to settle down, but they will.” He hoped. Though it was probably going to get worse before it got better.

Hera drew in a shaky breath and nodded, her head moving against his shoulder.

“Now,” Kanan said. “Do you want to tell me why _I_ have to be the one to do the sniff test?”

“Because you said yourself, you have the most sensitive nose on the base.”

That was the second time in an hour that that had been brought up. If he didn’t put a stop to it right now, the joke was going to be all over the base, and wherever he turned he would be faced with somebody asking him to sniff something.

“I didn’t say _that_ exactly. And anyway, you know as well as I do that I only said what I did to…” he stopped. There was something else that was going to spread across the base soon too, and he needed to speak to Ezra before it did. “Never mind,” he said. He slowly released her from the hug. “I need to talk to Ezra, we’ll pick this up later, okay?”

“Okay,” Hera agreed.

Kanan turned to leave again. The room still smelled, but he didn’t mention it; no point adding more fuel to the fire.


	2. Chapter 2

He found Ezra in his quarters, lying on his back on the bunk, head supported by his hands. He rang the door chime, and waited for an invitation this time. It came less quickly than he had imagined, but when it finally did, he let himself inside. As he had waited, Ezra had gotten to his feet and was now standing, awkwardly leaning against the bunks. “Hey,” he said in a tone filled with false cheer, as the door closed.

“Hey,” Kanan repeated. He hesitated, unsure how to begin. “Hera told me,” he blurted, and Ezra immediately gave up all pretense and sank down onto Zeb’s bunk, presumably simply because it was easier than climbing back onto his own.

“Oh,” he said in a hollow, empty voice. “Which part?”

Kanan frowned, taken aback. That implied that there was something else? “She told me about Sato,” he clarified. “What he told you.”

When Ezra didn’t respond, Kanan sat down next to him. “We’ll get it all sorted out,” he promised.”

“Yeah?” asked Ezra. “How? He seemed pretty certain. Hera said she’s going to fix it, but…” he didn’t pause to consider, or hesitate, but simply stopped talking midway through the sentence, as though the words were no longer important.

Hera had said something entirely different to him, when she had heavily implied that she might be about to take Sato’s side on the issue.

“And I’m sure she will,” Kanan said, and hoped that his uncertainty didn’t come through in his voice. “In the meantime, I should probably warn you, Zeb’s just taken a shower…”

“Not the worst thing that could happen,” Ezra said, with what sounded gratifyingly like a smile.

Kanan shook his head, but smiled back at him thinly. “You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “It looks like he decided to go hunting spiders this morning, he came back a little bloody, and… fragrant. Hera ordered him to take a shower, but I don’t hold out too much hope of all the stink coming off.”

Ezra didn’t answer at first, and Kanan got the distinct impression that Ezra was staring at him as he tried to work out whether it was some kind of bizarre joke. “Wait,” he said. “You’re telling me that the day I have to sleep back in here with Zeb, is the day he decides to take a bath in stench?”

Kanan grimaced. “It wasn’t a ‘bath’ as such. I think he just got a bit on him when he… I have no idea what he was doing. But basically, yeah. Sorry. But hey, it could be worse. At least you don’t have ‘the most sensitive nose on the base’.”

“Uh,” Ezra mulled that over, confused. Clearly the joke, or rumor, or whatever it was, hadn’t found its way to him yet. “I _might_ ,” he said. “I mean it’s not like we ever had a competition.” He huffed a tiny laugh, “If we did, though, Sabine would lose. I’m pretty sure she can’t smell anything at all, I think the paint fumes knocked out her sense of smell entirely.”

There was an opportunity here to steer the conversation in the direction of the actual reason that he had been intending to come looking for Ezra, before he had been waylaid by Sato’s ridiculous decision, and Zeb’s even more ridiculous hunting expedition. He didn’t particularly want to take it at this point, but they did need to talk about it.

“Remember the mission Zeb and Sabine were on?” he asked. “Remember what I told you about the planet?”

“Moon,” Ezra corrected. “And yeah, sulphur, right?”

Kanan winced. “When I told Hera I couldn't go, there’s a _chance_ I used that as an excuse. Some stupid lie about not being able to cope with the smell because… well it’s not important. The point is, it’s gotten out there, I’ve encountered it twice today, and I don’t think it’ll be long before half the base are talking about ‘Kanan’s delicate nose’.”

Ezra laughed out loud at that, and continued for a few minutes, starting with a giggle that evolved into a chuckle and finally Kanan could feel the bed shaking with his laughter. “I can’t tell if you’re serious,” Ezra told him between gasps for air, “or if you’ve made this whole thing up, the Zeb thing too, just to cheer me up. Either way, it worked.”

“Unfortunately, I’m completely serious,” Kanan told him. Now would have been the perfect time to bring it back around to Ezra, to information — true or otherwise — spreading quickly through a closed environment like the base, to the possibility that he was about to lose control of his secret and have to watch it spread in much the same way.

Ezra laughed again, and the words died in Kanan’s throat. Not yet, he didn’t have the heart to do it now. They still had time, it wasn’t going to be a problem for a while, surely.

Ezra sobered suddenly. He cleared his throat and took a final deep breath. “So,” he said, “talking of rumors, sort of. That other thing I guess that Hera _didn’t_ tell you about? Some random kid decided to tell me all about how his dad hurt his eyes in some accident.”

And just like that, Ezra managed to broach the subject for him. But already? It didn’t make sense. “Any chance it was some weird coincidence?”

“None at all. So, that’s out there.” He sighed. “My first thought was that _everyone_ knows, but now I’m thinking he just overheard someone or… something, I don’t know. So I guess there’ll be this in-between time where I won’t know who knows and who doesn’t. That’ll be a fun guessing game for me to play.”

He was being sarcastic, and more than a little sulky, and that probably wasn’t the healthiest response, but he was actually handling it better than Kanan had expected. Kanan remained quiet, unable to think of anything that he could say that didn’t run the risk of making things worse.

“It’ll probably spread faster than the news about your freakish sense of smell though,” Ezra added, “so I guess I win there.”

“…which I _don’t_ actually have,” Kanan told him.

Ezra shrugged. “Hey, it’s funny, and it might distract people from talking about me. Sorry, but I’m not going to deny it if anybody asks me.”

Kanan shrugged. Whatever worked. He got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “Freakish sense of smell or not, I don’t want to be here when Zeb arrives and asks me to sniff him.” He realized he hadn’t actually shared that detail with Ezra, but he appeared either not to have noticed, or not to care. “Anyway, didn’t we schedule a lesson for today? We can talk some more while we do that, if you want.”

Ezra sighed deeply, but followed him to his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ ♥ ♡ Comments are loved ♡ ♥ ♥


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